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Friday, 29 July 2011

FO FRIDAY!!! I have taken part in a few WIP Wednesdays but this is the first time I have been able to show anything finished. As I have explained before I was a chronic un-finisher. But not only that I have two projects to show you. I have borrowed my mom's camera which is pretty old but it's better than no pics at all. Or trying to describe it.That would be tricky!

The first is a cushion I made for my friend from knitting group. She has recently bought a most excellent camper van (jealous, much?!) and she has been very kind to me in the past and driven me to Wonderwool twice and Fibre Flurry too, so I thought some crochet love for her new van was in order. Her upholstery is all done in blue so I picked out some colours from my stash of Patons Diploma Gold DK and Jarol Heritage DK.

The pattern is based on Granny Cushion by Andie Hanley, though the pattern has since become unavailable, apparently due to an issue with the pattern being copied by someone else. I saw it when it was first blogged and put it in my queue so decided to try and make it anyway by using the pictures. I couldn't tell you how close to the original it is but it's fairly close. I wanted a solid back on it and experimented with using rounds but I think they look much better when done in more than one colour. In the end I found a spiral hotpad pattern and used that instead and carried on the increases for 19 rounds. Because this leaves you with a 12 sided shape (what are they called anyway? A twelveagon?) I needed to round it off to make it the same stitch count as the front for joining. I increased every 8 tr then closed off the spiral with a htr, and 2 dc's and a slip stitch.

I joined the cushion and left half open and divided up the remaining space for the 10 buttons I had. I wish I had put them closer together and left a smaller gap as the cushion would have still fitted in.

As the cushion pad is white it didn't look right showing through so I sewed a cushion cover, and less said about that the better really! I made it 3 times and each time made a silly mistake. The first was too small and made the cushion spherical, the second was a sort of lozenge shape and the 3rd was the right size but didn't meet properly at the back. As the back is solid I just went with that one and hoped for the best.

Then it was an epic job of sewing in all those ends! I think it took me longer than the cushion itself! I was still sewing in at knit group on Wednesday and finished just in time to hand it over.

TA-DAHHH! I could get used to this finishing things business.

My second FO for today is the Little Sister Dress. It's a hugely popular pattern and has been made 2396 times to date on Ravelry so I thought it would be fairly foolproof with sizing. I made it for a friend's daughter who had her first birthday last week. I had originally bought the PDF of Little Momo to make but after a couple of cast ons I really didn't like the way the cables looked in the yarn I was using so that one is a pattern for another day and another yarn. The yarn I have had in stash for a while, it's Regia Extra Twist Merino Colour in the colourway Espirit, which seems to be the only girly coloured one they do. It's from Black Sheep Wools at a good price at the moment at 2.99 a ball. The pictures show a bit of pooling but I think the white bits show up more in pictures and it isn't as visible in person. I hate pooling!

I cast on the 18m size and it measured how it should and I made it to the length in the pattern but it really could have done with being a little bit longer. It fits the recipient at the moment but I wanted it to have a bit more growing room for over the winter. It can still be worn with leggings though but I am a bit disappointed. As it was for a gift I wanted it to be just right. Width-ways it is very stretchy and the stockinette ribs are really satisfying to knit.

The buttons were from Wonderwool Wales last year, I think they look great with this project. I will have to go back next year so I can top up my stash of them again.

I can see lots of sock wool baby/child projects in my future, I really enjoyed this one. I ordered some fixed metal KnitPro circulars from P2tog and they arrived the next day. The postage is pretty reasonable too at only 1 pound per order.

The throw in the background is also a bit of a FO, I've been doing some machine dyeing. I needed some sofa throws as I have cream sofas (they were a bargain) but they show up every bit of dirt so I needed something big and cheap to cover them. I found some throws in Ikea but they were such wishy-washy pastel colours. I had a stash of machine dye left from when I was dyeing cot bedding for my kids. I don't do pastels, ever! As they were so big it would need 2 packs so I did one in ocean blue but didn't have 2 packs the same of anything else so I used one of fuchsia on a beige throw and it came out as retirement home pink! It swiftly went back in the machine with a pack of cherry red and came out a much better colour.

I have to scoot off now and do some tidying. My kids are coming home from their holiday with their Auntie tomorrow . We have got my eldest a new (second hand) bike as he has outgrown his other one and was feeling a bit left out with the other kids in the street all whizzing around without him. I can't wait to show it to him, I'm hoping he likes it. Mr J had his treadmill test at the hospital yesterday and they had to shave yet more chest hair off him (evil cackle) Nothing untoward showed up so they have put him in for some different tests instead at a later date. At least the hospital sandwich place is nice!

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Hellooo!

How are you? Thank you for visiting me here at Happy Elastic. I'm a thirty-something mum to three children and wife to a man with a beard. We live fairly harmoniously in our complete wreck of a house in Staffordshire, UK.